UH engineering professor awarded $400,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation

HONOLULU — How do you achieve a global objective through many autonomous decision makers who appear to be selfishly pursuing their own objectives? Gurdal Arslan, an electrical engineering professor from the College of Engineering at UH Mānoa, will determine how. Arslan was awarded a $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an integrated research and education program focusing on the unified theme of "cooperative systems design" using game theoretic methods.

Cooperative systems design is described as an interdisciplinary topic that connects a number of real-world applications in diverse areas as national security, telecommunications, transportation networks and power systems. Arslan hopes to develop theoretical and computational tools that will enable cooperative behavior to achieve global objectives such as minimizing overall congestion on highways or maximizing efficiency in using the resources in an ad-hoc wireless system.

The intent of the project will not involve any hardware implementation, but rather the development of ideas, concepts, methods, algorithms, simulation platforms and the communication of these tools through academic publications and industrial collaborations. Arslan describes the research component of the project as "achieving a global objective via selfish decision makers."

The project also includes a substantial teaching and outreach component. Arslan plans to introduce general game-theoretic concepts and computational tools to graduate and undergraduate engineering students by strengthening the curriculum through new course development and application-based research projects at appropriate levels. "The end product is expected to be a substantial source of knowledge to support students both in terms of research and education," said Arslan.

Arslan joined the College of Engineering as an assistant professor in August 2004. Previously, he was an assistant researcher in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles from 2001 to 2004. Arslan received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001.

About CAREERThe Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education. NSF encourages submission of CAREER proposals from junior faculty members at all CAREER-eligible organizations and especially encourages women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities to apply.